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We have connections in every major league clubhouse and front office in the United States but also in Japan, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands. You can count on our insights in situations both social and commercial, i.e., first dates and betting on the outcome of games. Signed "The Geekmaster"

Monday, December 8, 2014

Niner red to be swapped for A's green and gold? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Billy Beane's behind-the-scenes masterminding of yesterday Raiders beat-down of the Niners - he can be seen here taunting Jed York as the Niners czar exited the stadium before game's end - has thrown fuel on the blazing rumor that Jim Harbaugh will join the Oakland A's next season as Bob Melvin's bench coach.

"We play 162 games a season," Beane said. "That's 162 post-game news conferences, both taking pressure off Bob and giving a boost to the careers of analytical rhetoricians worldwide."

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

This is the most recent of a series of reports in which TSIBWWFfG chronicles a year in the life of the Patrick Finley Memorial Fantasy Baseball League, one of the original Big Six fantasy leagues.

J. Michael Robertson, Finley Fantasy's Beloved Commissioner for Life, yesterday indefinitely suspended the wife of former league champion Paul Fife following the recent emergence of a video providing additional information concerning an encounter between the two in a Reno casino elevator last summer.

Last July a surveillance video from the Peacock Casino showed a clearly infatuated Kit Fife tugging her husband into the elevator "playfully tossing her head in a flirtatious manner" and "drawing him close with lascivious intent" according to Robertson.

Though not conclusive, Robertson said, the footage suggested a degree of connubial bliss "likely to make the rest of the league feel bad" since "our own wives have gotten over us a long time ago."

In response to that video, BCL Robertson suspended Mrs. Fife from the annual league outing, mandating that Fife bring his mother instead.

The appearance last week on Gawker of a surveillance video recorded inside the elevator at the time of the original incident has exposed the Finley League to widespread criticism in the Geek Community citing the inadequacy of the original penalty.

In the new video, Mrs. Fife "showers her husband with burning kisses" and "fondles his left bicep muscle just as if he has one," Robertson said. "This cannot be allowed to stand. Why is Paul getting so much action? My self image has taken a blow."

League newcomer Chris Corwin had his own somewhat cryptic take on the controversy. "When I get busy on an elevator," he said, "I always start in the basement."

Monday, December 1, 2014

Because it was a long holiday weekend for the staff of TSIBIFWFfG, as Senior Intern I'm working the desk by myself today and feeling a little down "because Raiders," the meaning of which you don't have to be a geek to get.

... one of those distinctly of-the-Internet, by-the-Internet movements of language. It conveys focus (linguist Gretchen McCulloch: "It means something like 'I'm so busy being totally absorbed by X that I don’t need to explain further, and you should know about this because it's a completely valid incredibly important thing to be doing'"). It conveys brevity (Carey: "It has a snappy, jocular feel, with a syntactic jolt that allows long explanations to be forgone")....

But it also conveys a certain universality. When I say, for example, "The talks broke down because politics," I'm not just describing a circumstance. I'm also describing a category. I'm making grand and yet ironized claims, announcing a situation and commenting on that situation at the same time. I'm offering an explanation and rolling my eyes—and I'm able to do it with one little word. Because variety. Because Internet. Because language.
Yes, that's it. It succinctly captures a community's sense of the all pervading. Though you might say it is a nuanced use of language, it works best in those unnuanced instances where the notion one is wielding is indubitable - thick, heavy and unequivocal. If I say I am sad "because A's," that invites a challenge. It needs to be unpacked. It needs qualification for, indeed: They are pretty good but not good enough. They are a disappointment but not a humiliation. Hope peeks out from under the hem of their skirts, though it is probably not hope at all but only wishful thinking.
But "because Raiders" not only says all that needs to be said but also stops the conversation. As Walter Cronkite would have said at the end of a broadcast: "Well, that's the way it is."

I'm not sure there's a baseball equivalent, not one so unremittingly despairing. You could say "because Cubs," but they have been bad so long to the point of endearing. The Raiders were a brand, excellent in the idiosyncratic transgressive image of the late Al Davis in his prime and then they were alternately marginal-minus and adequate-plus as Davis slipped into inflexible cognitive decay. And now they are terrible to the point of cultural coin.

Here in Oakland, As Bill Murphy would have put it in Groundhog Day, "I'll give you a prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."Because Raiders.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

English: Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball franchise, answers a fan question at Oakland A's Fan Fest on January 27, 2007, at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, CA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Billy Beane is the General Manager of the Oakland A's. He is not as yesterday's post stated "a disgruntled intern coked to the gills on weed who broke in the GM's office with a fistful of passwords."

Friday, November 28, 2014

For the second year in a row, Seattle second sacker Robinson Cano "hit for Pi," as baseball stat geeks describe it. That is, his batting average was .314, spot on (save for the inconvenient placement of the decimal) the glorious mathematical constant that has given top mathematicians joy of the circle since the Great Pyramid of Giza.

What you probably missed was that in 2012 Cano hit .313, only a single base hit short of a record breaking three Pi's in a row, or a "bakery window" as New Yorker baseball writer Roger Angell has whimsically described it.

Ironically, Hall of Famer and Pittsburgh ironman Harold Joseph (Pie) Traynor never "squared the circle," as baseball old-timers called it. The closest he came was in 1926 when he hit .320.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

It's to allow maximum capacity and less breakage when being filled by machine with a filling such as custard or jelly. A square baseball would break at the corners and so would a triangular baseball.This naturally leads to the question why baseballs don't have a hole running through the middle. It is true that having a hole in the middle of the baseball would increase the surface area of the baseball and improve the texture when the baseball is fried. Perhaps not surprisingly, the reason for baseball's hesitance to adopt this commonsense innovation lies in baseball's endearing but sometimes infuriating adherence to tradition, to "the way we've always done it."Also not surprisingly, some of the game's most original thinkers have been willing to take a stand on this controversial issue. As Casey Stengel said, "It's high time something was done for the pitchers. They put up the stands and take down fences to make more home runs and plague the pitchers. Let them put a hole in the baseball and help the pitchers make a living."